In June 1965, 28-year-old Jim Henson started a written log of his activities in what became known as “The Red Book.” He noted what had happened up until that point (deemed “Ancient History”) and then recorded anything that he felt was worth recording as single line journal entries until the end of 1988.

Jim and his team were recruited by Flip Wilson’s production company to participate in an ecology-themed television special, Keep US Beautiful, which aired on NBC on March 27, 1973. That January, Jim, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson and John Lovelady flew out to Los Angeles to tape their part. Raymond Burr, the host, introduced what looked like a pile of garbage. According to Variety the, “Highspot of the hour was a parody of “Hey Look Me Over” done by Jim Henson’s Muppets made of trash, junk and garbage — a delightfully ironic plea for more litter to bury the earth and make their scruffly existence more enjoyable.” Jim clearly saw the value (and comedy) in trash talk. Not only had his grouch found a home in a garbage can on Sesame Street, but on Fraggle Rock, Marjorie the Trash Heap was the source of great wisdom and sage advice.

When putting Muppets in outlandish situations, great preparation is in order. This was true for practically every scene in The Great Muppet Caper, including the finale/credit sequence. To return to the US after solving the mystery of the great baseball diamond heist, Kermit and the gang fly back in the cargo hold of a jetliner. They are jettisoned out of the plane wearing parachutes and as they float toward the ground, the last jokes are cracked and the credits roll. A July 15, 1980 memo from Caroly Wilcox of the Muppet Workshop made it clear why they waited until the last days of filming to shoot this scene. The possibilities she outlined included using costumed parachutists wearing Muppet masks, using oversized dummies carved to look like the characters, or shooting a scale model of plane with miniatures in a wind tunnel. Jim went with her last suggestion – to wait until the end of the shoot and use real puppets in weighted harnesses. “If they get ruined, they get ruined,” Caroly noted. The movie would be finished so it wouldn’t matter. The close ups were done in the studio and then for the long shots, the puppets were thrown out of the plane.

By his January 17, 1971 appearance on the last season of The Ed Sullivan Show, Jim was a seasoned veteran, having appeared more than twenty times before. The Sunday night audience enjoyed the Muppet interludes which included musical numbers, parodies, monsters, reindeer, and Kermit. Jim tried out new material and also went back to tried and true bits he had performed on other programs. “The String Quartet” was a bit of both. Almost a decade earlier, on March 30, 1962, Jim juxtaposed the staid world of classical music with the anarchy of his early Muppet characters for The Today Show. Kermit tries to organize a classical quartet with Harry the Hipster, and Theodore (graduates of Sam and Friends) only to be frustrated by the lack of a fourth musician (Mildred kindly offers violets when violins are requested) and the unwillingness of the group to all play the same piece of music. By the finish, Kermit is at his wits’ end (a place he will find himself frequently over the years), yelling to anyone who will listen, “Help! Help! Help!”

The Sullivan version was a much more polished piece but had many of the same conceits and bad jokes. Again, the group starts out with only three musicians but is joined by a fourth – Mahna Mahna, Jim’s hipster character known for the song of the same name. In this bit, he is called Harry, perhaps in homage to the original script, and despite the need for a violinist, is a drummer. His exuberant playing anticipates Animal from The Muppet Show and is a neat contrast to the refined world of classical music. Using opposites is an easy way to make a joke, and it always seems to work for The Muppets. In the end, despite the best efforts of the leader, the group is won over to the groovy side and they happily make music together.

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Jim’s script for The String Quartet on The Today Show, March 30, 1962.

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Script used on The Ed Sullivan Show for The Sting Quartet bit, January 17, 1971.

Jim was always on the look out for talent, whether for performers or for his workshop. He took time to learn about people personally rather than depending on the judgment of others. Taking advantage of a rare extended stay in New York in January 1978, Jim met with two people that would prove to be major additions to his team.

Steve Whitmire, performer of Kermit the Frog and Ernie for the past twenty years along with his own characters like Rizzo the Rat, was a young puppeteer from Atlanta working at The World of Sid and Marty Krofft, a local theme park. Caroll Spinney (Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch), met Steve at a puppetry festival and encouraged him to contact Jim who was looking for Sesame Street performers. Steve, then a very green 18 year old, flew to NY and spent a good part of the week talking and trying out puppets. Instead of Sesame Street, Jim decided that Steve should go over to London and join The Muppet Show cast. He performed a huge range of characters that first year, mostly in the background, and Jim was really pleased with his progress. Just a couple of years later, Jim said, “I think Steve has a sense of making a character a living [thing]. If you get a character that you can actually believe is a living, thinking, reacting creature, once you can work at that sort of level of believability, then it can grow from there.”

Along with The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, Jim was in the midst of getting his fantasy project, The Dark Crystal, off the ground. The core creative team was coming together in New York where designer Brian Froud would arrive for meetings starting on January 16th. The previous December, Jim had received an intriguing gift from his colleague Michael Frith: an exquisite Japanese-style marionette made by a young artist recently moved to New York, Wendy Midener. Jim immediately saw the potential of combining Wendy’s talent for sculpting dolls and puppets with Brian’s creative vision and called her in for the January 10th meeting. They talked about the project, and she was invited back for the first development meetings with Brian. Very quickly, The Dark Crystal became Wendy’s full time occupation, and by the time the production moved to London the following year, she and Brian were a couple. Notably, Wendy sculpted many versions of Jen and Kira and worked to translate scores of Brian’s drawings into three dimensions. The same year, she helped make Yoda for Star Wars and later was instrumental in the development of Jim’s second fantasy feature, Labyrinth. Today, the Frouds live in Devon, England in a 15th century house where they continue to make art.

With the tremendous success of The Muppet Show and the production of The Muppet Movie in 1978, Time magazine planned a cover story about Jim Henson and his creations. The Christmas-dated issue was to feature Jim surrounded by Muppets as a newsstand draw and would have been the first Time cover for the Muppets since 1970 when Big Bird was featured. Photos were taken and mock-ups were sent to Henson Associates; all were excited by the prospect of such great exposure and recognition. John Skow’s six-page article inside detailed the global reach of the Muppets and described their success in what would become the most quoted passage from all of Henson press coverage – Skow breathlessly exclaimed that The Muppet Show, “…is almost certainly the most popular television entertainment now being produced on earth. The Muppet series is seen by at least 235 million people in 106 countries.”

The presses were ready to roll when President Jimmy Carter announced that after thirty years of “bellicose estrangement”, the United States and Communist China would establish normal diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. A huge accomplishment in international diplomacy for the President, the news merited a cover and took precedence over the examination of our shared popular culture. While the Muppets retained their six-page spread inside, Kermit’s smiling face was relegated to the upper right hand corner of the cover. Nonetheless, Jim’s was enormously gratified with the celebratory press in such a visible publication – and his public relations staff was thrilled to have such quotable text.